For a long time now, I have been having issues (on two different gentoo boxes no less) going to full screen in games. I'm using the radeon open source driver. About 1 in 5 times, I can successfully go to full screen. Every other time though, the screen will attempt to go full-screen, but all you see is the desktop, yet the game acts as if it's running. All I can do is run xkill and try again. Running in windowed mode works everytime, but I'd prefer full-screen. This problem I only have in Gentoo. Manjaro and SolydX both have no issues going to full-screen with the radeon driver.

It's mainly a headache when playing Minecraft, but there are other games that behave the same way. Is there any way I can improve my chances of going full-screen? I'd rather not use fglrx if possible. Thanks

Are, by any chance, the rest of the games that fail also java-based like minecraft is?

If not, the next time it fails, open an xterm and check if there's some output from your graphics driver in the dmesg listing.

Besides that, what I'd do in this situation would be to run the game in windowed mode, fitting the screen, and remove the decorations for that window in my window manager configuration. The effect will be virtually the same, plus you can use alt-tab if you need to check your mail or something _________________Gentoo Handbook | My website